Square Games

Clark Baker, November 2002

Assume that you know how to square dance. Not only that, but that you
are good at it. Perhaps you have already learned some Advanced and
Challenge dancing. Perhaps you are even a little bored at the current
dance, weekend, festival, or convention. Or perhaps you just want a
slight change to make things interesting. What you need is a square
game -- something you or your square can do while the caller is
calling to the rest of the folks.

My ground rules for this type of dancer-led fooling around include:

Obtain your squares' cooperation

Do it in the back of the hall

Don't bother others

Don't disrupt the calling

Don't come across as being better than everyone else

Don't seem like you are having way more fun than everyone else

My main criterion for inclusion in the following list is that the
particular square game can be danced in real-time while the caller is
calling to the rest of the floor. This means that it must work with
his choreography and timing.

Dance with phantoms

If you don't have enough dancers for a full square, form a partial
square (1 to 7 dancers works) and try to dance the choreography.
Sometimes it helps to identify your counterpart in another square so
you can double check in the cases where you are uncertain or get lost.
This especially helps with only one or two dancers in your square.

As the square fills up, dancing with 6 or 7 dancers should feel more
like a full square, and your focus should be more internal to the
square than external checking off a counterpart.

Skills you will need to develop include knowing what the overall
formation is (e.g. Right-Hand Ocean Waves, Lines Facing, etc.) and
your position in it (e.g. Lead Center in Right Hand Waves, #3 in a
column). Usually it is not necessary to track the exact sex
arrangement, but experienced phantom dancers can do a reasonable job
on that. Another skill is dancing so that the square is always the
correct size and shape with respect to the the other real dancers.
This will allow you to interact with the real dancers when you are
supposed to. With only 2 or 3 real dancers in the square, it is
important to know when they are adjacent to you, etc.

In squaring up, you have a decision to make with respect to diagonal
opposites. With two dancers, you could both decide to be head men
(i.e. opposite each other). This allows you to check each decision
off the other dancer. Another alternative would be to be one head man
and one side man. This would be harder, but you would always know
where the men are, and hence where the women are.

Dance "no hands"

Unless you have tried it, dancing without using hands is a lot harder
than you might expect. You lose many of the kinesthetic clues that
may help you start a call or allow you to realize that you are heading
in the wrong direction.

When dancing without hands, it can help if you try to make connections
with the other dancers using eye contact.

I find it better to have the whole square decide to dance without
hands instead of just one or two dancers. That said, my daughter
shows her displeasure with me by refusing to use hands only with me.

Same sex square

Dancing a square of all boys or all girls can be fun. Half the
dancers must correctly dance the other gender's part. Also, it can
get confusing on calls like "Boy's Run". It helps to have the named
dancers identify themselves by raising a hand. It can also help to
memorize who is dancing arky before the tip starts.

Arky square

Take a normal square and have everyone Half Sashay. Now all the women
are dancing the boy's part and vice versa. While this shouldn't
matter for many calls, the ones it does have been internalized at such
a deep, instinctive level, many will find Arky dancing difficult. Be
sure to do both the patter and singing call, because singing calls
usually have their own set of gender-specific calls waiting to
surprise you.

Rotating Square

After each sequence the squares circles right 1/8. This means you
change gender after each sequence, but only half the square changes
head/side-ness. One of the fun side effects is that the two people
who are your partner and corner are always either your partner or your
corner. You just need to remember which. It's a nice game to play
for a group who is tired with "plain old arky".

Mirror Image square

The Mirror concept is on the C3B list. However, the basic idea of
interchanging left and right occurs at Mainstream with Left Square
Thru and Reverse Flutter Wheel.

The idea of dancing mirror image is to have the whole square dance
with all the right actions interchanged with left actions. When you
square up, the boy normally has the girl to his right, so a
mirror-image squared set will have everyone sashayed from normal.
Boys are still boys. On a Star Thru, the girl still goes under.
However, boys use their left hand and girls their right hand.

Some think of this as the same kind of switch one must take when
driving in England. Others are helped by thinking that they dance so
as to make the dancing look "right" in a mirror. However you think
about it, it takes some practice and it is a lot harder than Arky.

If you give this a try, be sure to walk some calls first. I recommend
Allemande Left, Right And Left Grand, Promenade Home, Star Thru,
Double Pass Thru, Track 2, Swing Thru, Wheel And Deal (one-faced line)
and then some that don't matter like Boys Run, Ferris Wheel.

I find it is useful and important to try hard to get every little bit
correct. Be sure to make all Pass Thrus left shoulder. The same goes
for all Partner Trades (including the ends of a Trade By). Tapping
your left shoulder, using eye contact, and making slightly wide
adjustments can help. Also, be careful that all handholds are done
properly. Be sure to dance the singing call. Practice a Swing first.
Good luck.

Arky Mirror Image square

While it might seem like fun to combine both of these ideas, I haven't
gotten a lot of fun out of it. Instead it just seems hard and
annoying with few rewards.

The square starts out looking "normal", but in reality, every boy is
dancing as a girl, and all rights are interchanged with lefts. People
watching may not realize that you are doing something different, and
will be hard pressed to exactly describe what you are doing.

Nose dancing

There are several ways to do this. My favorite is to start with a
normal square set, have everyone face their partner, and place their
inside hands on their hips so that the man's left and woman's right
elbows point into the square. The remaining arms dangle straight
down.

The elbows form your nose. For the man, your right "arm" comes out of
your stomach and your left "arm" comes out of your back. For the
women, it is reversed. Of course the arms don't really exist so all
dancing will be without hands. Now, knowing where your nose is, and
passing the correct "shoulders", try the following:

Heads Forward And Back
Heads Dosado
Heads Right And Left Thru
Heads Square Thru 2
Dosado to a wave
Swing Thru
Boys Run
Couples Circulate
Wheel And Deal
Pass To The Center
Centers Star Thru

See, you can dance that way. Now, go try it in real time to a real
caller. While nose dancing is possible, it isn't great dancing
because you are moving sideways most of the time. It takes a lot of
concentration (usually your head is turned 90 degrees to match your
"nose"), and a lot of energy. There is not a lot of opportunity for
mistakes and recovery.

While dancing it, my mind always knows what the formation looks like
and how the real dancers relate to that formation. If I relax my
concentration and look at the square as if each dancer's body
represent their facing direction (e.g. turn "nose" right-hand waves
into normal double pass thru), I am immediately lost. It is a funny
feeling.

You could also try having one dancer dance "nose" in a normal square.

Cutting in and out of a square

8 dancers are in the square, dancing normally, and one or more dancers
are on the outside. At the correct time, one of the outside dancers
slips into the square, causing an inside dancer to be bumped out.
There are many ways to accomplish this, depending on the choreography
and your skill level.

Before cutting anyone out you should make sure that they, and the
square, are willing to participate. You should know if you are just
cutting one person out, or if anyone is fair game. You should know if
it is acceptable to do cut outs across gender lines. Once you are in
the square you must know if you are a boy or a girl, and it
would be useful if you know if you are a Head or a Side and where your
home is.

If you are on the inside and sense that someone is cutting you out,
wait until it happens. Don't jump out of the square because you think
you have just been cut out. If it happens, you will know.

Make sure the square is dancing well enough to allow for cutouts. A
cutout can disrupt the square and cause a weak square to break down.
Then, you will be in the square and know that you caused it, and have
to square up and dance with them.

Don't do cutouts when the caller is using your square as his sight
square (unless he can accommodate it (e.g. John Sybalsky)).

Be aware that not everyone has the same skills at cutouts. You may
cut someone out who can't get back in. Then you are inside, stuck
dancing when you really want to do cutouts and they are outside,
standing, when they really want to be dancing.

Initially, trying to cut someone out of a square seems harder than
jumping onto a moving amusement park ride. If it would just stop for
a minute and let you think, you could do it, but it is in constant
motion. Knowing how certain calls work and where specific dancers
will end is the key to doing cutouts well. For example, Square Thru 4
is just a 1/4 Out. On a Heads Square Thru 4 you could easily step
into the ending position of the dancer you want to cut out while they
are dancing the Square Thru 4. Others calls like Circulate and Acey
Deucey have easily predictable dance actions and allow you to step
into an ending position (usually the trailing end) before the actual
dancer gets there. Some callers have combinations of calls which they
often use (like Swing Thru, Boys Run). Certain of these can allow you
to know where your cutout dancer will end before they actually get
there.

A way to get started with cutouts is to get 3 head men, two dancing
and one on the outside and agree that you will do cutouts among
yourselves. You know you will always be a head man, and one dancing
head man will always be near the out head man.

As you gain skill in cutouts, more points go to really smooth or
really clever transitions.

Have 1 or more dancers dance Gemini

If I am an extra dancer, I will sometimes join a square in motion by
putting my arm around the waist of an existing dancer and having the
two of us dance as a single dancer. This is the same as the As
Couples concept on the Advanced list.

The Gemini couple takes up a little more space (it is wider than your
average dancer), and can be misleading to the other dancers. However,
if the Gemini couple dances well, and with the right square, it can
work and be fun.

You can have more than one Gemini couple in the square, and could even
put together a whole square and dance Gemini. The more Gemini couples
you add, the harder it is to keep up with the caller who is timing his
calls off the other squares. Of course a caller could have the entire
floor square up Gemini and alter his timing to match the whole floor.

You can do the same thing with two dancers one behind the other
(i.e. In Tandem), but it isn't as much fun. Sometimes I will join a
square for a few calls by following real close behind a dancer who may
not even know I am there. This is especially fun on Square Thru and
Swing Thru, but doesn't work well for other calls.

One time I started dancing behind another dancer and soon another
dancer joined on behind me and another and another. This had the
effect that the original dancer had a "tail" of 4 other dancers. It
took a while for the tail to clear in calls like Square Thru. We had
a caller who would alter his timing for us and it all worked out ok.

Have 1 or more dancers dance Twosome

Twosome is a concept on the C3 list. It is similar to As Couples or
Tandem, but one dancer in the pair is always to the north of the other
dancer. As they move around the floor, their relationship will change
from couples to tandem, but they will have a consistent facing
direction and one dancer will always be north of the other.

Since Twosome is harder than As Couples or Tandem dancing, replacing
one dancer in a normal square with a pair of dancers who dance twosome
is hard. As long as the square knows what is going one, the
difficulty is mainly for the twosome pair.

16 dancers could square up, all as twosome pairs and try to dance.
Unfortunately the caller would have to alter his timing so this would
only work if everyone danced this way, or if there were only one
square at the dance. It would be good twosome practice.

Trade dancers between squares

Certain calls, like Grand Swing Thru, provide a great opportunity to
trade two dancers between squares. Depending on the spacing of the
squares, as long as the two dancers know they want to trade (perhaps
by eye contact), even calls like Trade By (have the end boys walk
straight ahead accomplishing a Reverse Swap Around between the
squares) and Circulate (have the lead ends walk straight ahead) can be
used to accomplish trades between squares.

Trading with your diagonal opposite in the other square is good
(e.g. Man #1 in one square trades with man #3 in the adjacent square).
Trading with someone else can be a problem, especially if you want to
trade back. Often you won't be near the person ever again.

On a circulate (wave or column) the outside dancers can 1/2 circulate,
trade, and continue their circulate in the new square. This is slick,
but can be disorienting.

Having traded over, what next? Probably you will enjoy everyone
wondering where you came from (especially your new partner) and
wondering where the other dancer went. Next you will want to trade
back. Or, go exploring and trade to yet another square. Remember
that you must make sure the squares are strong enough and that you
aren't upsetting anyone (including the caller).

In order to prevent trading from degenerating into meaningless mayhem,
the goal should be to get back to home by the end of the patter tip,
or perhaps to exchange all the dancer between two squares (especially
if each square is dressed alike).

You must make sure that the dancer you are trading with knows that
something is going to happen. It is very disorienting to suddenly be
traded to a new square. Your mental picture of the square and where
you are in it is now completely wrong.

Trade dancers within your square

This relatively new idea has a pair of dancers (often you and your
partner) changing places with each other, signaled by one dancer in
the pair establishing eye contact with the other and snapping their
fingers. This finger snap indicates that they each have the other's
part and usually takes the place of a Pass Thru or Pull By. After
snapping your fingers, each dancer in the pair does a U Turn Back to
accomplish the Pass Thru, Pull By, or Partner Trade action.

If the dancers in the square are in the habit of observing their
diagonal opposite you should warn them that it will change. If you
are playing the game with your partner, you must remember to change
gender each time. All this while remembering to dance. It can get
confusing on a Square Thru 4 when you "snap" your partner in the
second hand (remember that was a left pull by so use the right hand
next, and change genders) and then she "snaps" you on the 4th hand.

Some more simple examples: If you are going in for a scoot back, do a pass
thru instead. Couples Circulate can become Crossover Circulate.
Instead of a hinge, do a cast off 3/4, or go backward 1/4!

For an arm-turn trade, you can just stand still. If you do this in the
middle of a swing thru or other call, this may confuse people who are
waiting for you to trade. To avoid this, it's fun to turn backward 90
degrees and then forward 90. This maintains the timing and flow, and the
other 6 people in your square may not even realize that you have traded.

Of course, multiple people can "snap" each other. Perhaps then the
game is to keep dancing while remembering what part you have. Or the
game could be to try to have everyone snap their way back to their
original part before the singing call.

Hexagon dancing

This is my latest fascination. Hexagon squares (6 couples arranged in
a hexagon) have been around since 1968, but have only received use
from a handful of callers. I observed that all calls are possible,
and that a hexagon square can dance with the same timing as a normal
square.

Bigon dancing

Hexagon dancing adds two couples to the existing 4. Bigon dancing
takes two couples away from the existing 4. It is harder than Hexagon
dancing. At first I thought it was too hard to think of and that it
couldn't be danced in real time. All motion around the center of the
set happens at two times the normal speed (instead of 2/3 normal speed
in hexagons). However, several folks at Tech Squares have been
successful in doing Bigon dancing. And, it only takes 4 of you.

My hexagon paper and Justin's animations give some hints as to how to
think about this type of dancing.

Czech Line Dancing

This game is not in a square. Make a line facing caller at the bottom
of the hall, doesn't matter about gender or amount of people.
Everyone imagines his own phantom square in which he/she acts as a man
#3 (the head man who is watching caller in a normal square). As the
tip starts the whole line is doing the same action, it looks like
dancing N-some (see "dancing Twosome" for the explanation). You can
also make a column instead of line and try to act as a girl #4 (for
example). It depends on agreement of people in a line.

It is a good exercise to dance with Phantoms and also an interesting
feeling to see the line working "as one man". You can also play it
when you have 5 people who can't establish the square.

Windmilling

Not exactly a square game, but useful when you have too many dancers
for a square and still want to keep most dancing. Jimmy Johnson wrote
to me and said:

One other one we use when we have one couple extra, but don't want to
have them sit out is what we call 'Windmilling'.

The extra couple starts standing behind one of the head couples, but
is not involved in the dance. Each time the square is resolved and
the dancers promenade home, the extra couple steps into the place of
the couple they were behind. The displaced couple moves one spot
counterclockwise to stand behind that couple and wait their turn to
return to the square. This way, everyone rotates in and out, and
dancers change from heads to sides as they go.

Conclusion

Hopefully I have given you some ideas on how to spice up your dancing.
If you try some of these and they work for you, let me know. If you
know of other Square Games that I haven't described, please tell me
about them.

Astute callers may be able to use some of these Square Games as
gimmicks that provide variety and fun without teaching more calls or
calling harder. It all depends on how you present them and how hard
you make them. For most dancers, a little goes a long way.